


Turn Around and Look At Me

by shellface



Category: VIXX
Genre: Angst, Arkham Verse, M/M, Superhero!AU, basically DC!verse, hongbin might be incarcerated in arkham asylum, inspired by the Voodoo Doll and Hyde MVs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2016-12-29
Packaged: 2018-09-11 22:35:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9037670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shellface/pseuds/shellface
Summary: Hongbin isn't the same person, not any more. Unfortunately, Wonshik is still too much in love with him to stay away.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dangerkittyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dangerkittyn/gifts).



> Merry Christmas, and a happy new year! Um. I know the pairing's wrong. I really do apologise for that, but I saw the prompt, and I had to. I love Arkham Asylum, okay, it's one of my favourite comics, and to involve VIXX and Voodoo Doll - ugh, I had to.
> 
> I'm really sorry if it's not what you wanted. D:
> 
> Thanks to B for reading it and encouraging me. <3 I wouldn't have been brave enough to post it otherwise.

The snow crunches underfoot, as Wonshik trudges up the path to the asylum. The car park for visitors is almost half a mile away from the actual building – for obvious reasons. It wouldn't do to have so many getaway cars so conveniently located for escapees.

Arkham Asylum looms above him, dark and threatening. It doesn't look safe. It doesn't look happy. And it is most definitely the last place he would ever want to leave someone he loves – but when your superhero husband goes as crazy as Hongbin did, you don't get a choice.

They practically ripped him from his arms. It was stupid, he admits; he should never have tried to hide him, should have handed him over as soon as he knew the serum wasn't working. But he couldn't. Not when Hongbin was still...Hongbin.

If he had been brave enough to hand him over immediately, perhaps it wouldn't have ended like this. Perhaps they could have reversed the effects, found some way to stem the tide of malice viciously winding its way around Hongbin's system. Maybe that awful, awful explosion wouldn't have happened.

Maybe all those poor, innocent bystanders wouldn't have died.

He shakes his head. Enough. What's past is past – at least, that's what his therapist says. They seem to think he can't keep beating himself up over something he didn't do, but they're wrong. Hongbin wasn't in control of himself. It was his job to keep him in check.

It always had been, from the first moment they teamed up together. Hongbin's power had never been easy to control, and that was something Wonshik excelled at. They complimented each other. They loved each other.

And it's not the same without him. He feels as though he has lost part of himself. Though they try to help him compensate for the loss of power, try to teach him to fight alone, he just can't do it any more. He knows that he has had enough. It's over, for him – he has lost his calling.

He lost it the moment they destroyed the one thing he loved more than anything else.

***

He signs in at the desk, holding his face up to the camera for the retinal scan, and pressing the forefinger of his right hand against the fingerprint scanner. The frosty woman behind the glass divider nods. “You can go through.”

“Thanks,” he says softly. He can feel her eyes on him, judging. He knows she knows who he is.

It's yet another reason he's decided to retire. How can anyone trust him to do his job, when he failed it so spectacularly?

The moment he steps through the steel doors, there is a white-coated professional waiting to lead him through, along with two burly handlers in green jumpsuits. This place is efficient. Efficient, but soulless. They have to be – if Harley Quinn has taught them anything, it's that it doesn't do to make friends with prisoners.

He doesn't recognise the doctor – they change them regularly, to make sure no attachments can be formed – but he asks anyway. “How is he?”

“Stable, for now,” the doctor says crisply, as they move through the blindingly white corridors. It is a long walk to Hongbin's quarters. Long, and depressing. The newer wings contain only those of least concern; it's when you get into the deeper, darker wings that you know you're going to find the scary ones.

Wonshik doesn't think it's really fair. Hongbin has never quite been a supervillain.

“Can you expand on that?” Wonshik asks awkwardly. 'Stable' doesn't really tell him anything. All it tells him is that he's not dead.

The doctor gives him a pitying look. He knows he won't get an answer. He never does. They seem to think Hongbin's condition needs to be top secret, even to family and friends. Perhaps they're just scared of telling him he can only get worse, not better.

If that's the truth, then honestly, he is glad they are keeping it from him.

***

As they move through the asylum, the doors only get bigger and scarier, the locks more intricate and high-tech. The doctor stops when they reach Hongbin's room, and nods at the two minders. Wonshik swallows, and holds out his arms for them to search him.

The search completed, he waits as the doctor unlocks the door, fingers briskly tapping an insanely long string of code. The door unlocks with a hiss.

Wonshik steps in. The first thing he sees is a wall of thick, impenetrable glass. Wonshik knows it's indestructible, because Hongbin spent the first week of his life in there banging against it, screaming for him. Or so he was told. They wouldn't let him near him, that first week.

They knew he wanted Hongbin to escape.

He walks up the glass, pressing both hands against it. “Hongbin?” He calls softly. He knows he can hear him. “It's me.”

Slowly, Hongbin's face turns towards him. Wonshik forces himself not to recoil. It's the eyes that are the biggest shock. No matter how many times he sees them, he cannot get used to them. Blank and dark, the pupils are X-shaped, in a bizarre formation that seems too perfect to be real.

He does not move, and Wonshik feels his heart crack. He had been hoping for a good day. Still, he tries again. “It's me, Wonshik,” he says, more clearly. “I'm here.”

No response. He sighs. _Fine, then_ , he thinks, squaring his shoulders. He will just have to make do. He lowers himself down onto the floor, sitting cross-legged. Hongbin watches him with detached curiosity.

The doctor does not say anything. They are used to visitors being determined to stay, no matter how lost in the madness their loved ones are.

He begins to talk, hoping that just the sound of his voice will be soothing to Hongbin. That – if he talks long and loud enough – something will click in Hongbin's damaged brain, and perhaps he will realise that he is here.

It is a futile hope, but it does not stop him from running through the lives of everyone they've ever met. He tells Hongbin about weddings, deaths, parties, babies, new pets, world events, stupid things that happened to him – anything, as long as there is the faintest chance that Hongbin could be interested.

His heart stutters as Hongbin pushes himself off the bed, moving with purpose towards the window. Towards him. “Wonshik?” He calls urgently, “is that you?”

He leaps to his feet so fast, he stumbles, pressing himself against the glass. “I'm right here, baby,” he says, his heart in his throat. “Look at me,” his voice is hoarse, and he knows how pathetic he sounds, but he can't help it. “I'm here, Hongbin, I'm right here.” His voice cracks.

Hongbin stares at him, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “Is it really you? They've done this before,” he mutters to himself. “They like to taunt me.” Wonshik chokes on a sob.

“Just follow my voice,” he pleads, “I'm real, I promise.” There have been times when Hongbin has refused to believe he is actually here, so convinced that he is a figment of his imagination that he actually becomes angry with him.

“You even sound like him,” Hongbin whispers, his strange eyes flickering with an otherworldly glow. Wonshik can't stop the tears at that, still pressing himself against the glass, as if somehow he can break through it and touch him.

“Use your power.” He knows he shouldn't be doing this – knows that this is possibly the _stupidest_ idea he could ever have – but the chance that this is actually Hongbin, desperate to know that he's here, is too great a lure. “You'll see it can only be me.”

He can feel Hongbin probing at the edges of his mind, the alien presence triggering a tension headache. At first, he used to see this as a good sign – if Hongbin could control this aspect of his power, then surely that meant he was slowly coming back to himself? But now, he knows that it is just another aspect of his madness, and dread settles in the pit of his stomach.

Hongbin has used it to trick him, before. And like an idiot – a lovelorn, desperate fool – he always falls for it, always falls for the crying at the edges of his mind. He should know by now that Hongbin is just looking for weaknesses. He is his best chance for an escape, simply because he is stupid enough to give him anything he wants if he acts like the man he used to be.

But he isn't sure. Sometimes, he thinks he sees a glimmer of his lover in the backs of those putrid, warped eyes. Occasionally, he can hear Hongbin in this creature's voice. And, of course – as long as he has those painfully lucid periods, he is going to come back to him.

Hongbin would hate him for this, he knows. He would be furious with him for risking his own safety like this, would castigate him for staying with a man who is so obviously dangerous. In the moments when he is almost completely self-aware, he has banned Wonshik from coming.

But the broken part of his brain always takes over, in the end, and overturns the ban. Wonshik is secretly grateful for this.

There is always a chance, and he is nothing if not an optimist. He turns to the doctor. “Let me in,” he demands. “Let me in _right now_.”

“It's not safe,” the doctor says. “Absolutely not.”

He growls in frustration. “He's in pain, and he needs to know I'm actually here. Just let me touch him, I'll do anything...please?” He whispers. He sinks to his knees, his hands in front of him. If he has to beg, then so be it. If he has to bribe the doctor, then he is willing, but he can't leave Hongbin like this.

The doctor gives him that strange, pitying look again. “He's not in pain,” he says gently. “I know it seems that way, but – ”

“You don't know that,” Wonshik shakes his head, stubborn to the last. “You don't know him like I do, you can't see that he – he needs me. I can get through to him. You know I can.” He bows his head. “Please,” he says, his voice nothing more than a shaking, miserable whimper. “Please.”

The doctor shifts uneasily, but there is curiosity in his sharp eyes. He wants to see if Wonshik can do it. He wants to _know_ what will happen.

Wonshik knows he has won, though the victory is hollow. Deep down, he knows that the only reason they let him come back is that they are running a clandestine experiment – and if he dies, whose fault is it?

Only his, after all, a man too blinded by the past to admit he has no future.

***

He knows that he has made a mistake as soon as the door hisses shut behind him, but he cannot bring himself to regret it. The glass between them is thinner now, and locked in the anteroom as he is, he feels some semblance of safety.

It's a lie, of course. If Hongbin chooses to, he can attack him any way he wants to.

“Wonshik,” Hongbin calls, in that strange, alluring new way of his. His breath mists the glass between them, and Wonshik finds himself staring at him with hopeless longing. “Wonshiiiiiiiiiik...”

It doesn't sound right. Hongbin always called him Shikkie, if he called him anything at all.

“I'm right in front of you.” He steels himself for the inevitable turnaround.

It's the head tilt that always gets him. It is strangely animalistic; another feature of this new, not-quite-human Hongbin. His movements are too smooth, too sinuous – there is no awkward cringing here, no dimpled smile. “I see you,” the words are a sibilant hiss, and Wonshik closes his eyes. No. Not now.

When he opens his eyes, Hongbin is right in front of him, grinning that manic, disturbing smile that distorts his face almost to the point of making him unrecognisable. His heart thuds in shock, but he works to school it from his face.

Whatever remained of the person he was before the serum took over his body is long gone, and he knows the pain is clear on his face. The Hongbin-who-is-not-Hongbin laughs in delight. “Oh, Wonshik,” he says, in mock sympathy. “You look so sad.”

He should be disgusted. He should be walking away from this caricature of the man he married – but he can't. There is a pull about him, some invisible line between them that prevents him from making a clean break of it. There is still _something_ he recognises as Hongbin, and if that means he's in love with a monster – then so be it.

When he vowed to be with him forever, he meant it.

He almost doesn't notice the first flutter of pain, but he is too used to Hongbin's tactics to completely miss it. The next is so intense he can feel the edges of his vision blurring – but still he holds his hand out. He does not walk away, does not beg for help like he should.

This is his punishment, after all.


End file.
